The first part went okay, as did the canyon part (though it was quite annoying flying a fast unmaneuverable plane through all that). My problem is the bit at the end where you have to save the commandos. That jerk in the jet does not help you at all (no wingman controls) and despite blowing up the ship and all tanks, the ground forces keep taking damage. There is not enough time to blow up everything before they all die. :X

It doesn't help that my plane is made of paper and thus I can't even go on any long strafing runs without losing a ton of health, or that Teach does not launch no matter how many tanks you blow up.

Blow up the enemy planes

If I do that, then the ground forces die super fast because the tanks are beating on them. It's not exactly easy to take on ~10 Me-109Es solo with no backup, especially when they're far more maneuverable than you.

Use your rockets on the ground forces and on the planes. The ship should only take two strafing runs to take down as well.

I don't think there's any special strategy there. You just have to destroy the red targets as fast as you can. Focus on the tanks first (as far as I remember, you don't have to kill the planes at all). A single rocket takes down at least 3 or 4 tanks and you can fire rockets in a very fast succession, so you should be able to destroy all of them very quickly.

Not 100% sure but I think at the start of this mission you can choose which kind of secondairy weapon you want.

Default is rockets but you can switch to "Self Guided Missles" and then its a walk in the park against 10 fighters.

If I am wrong then just shoot all ground units fast as possible.

You're wrong, you don't have missiles at that point. And, anyway, once you steal the plane you use what it has (rockets), not your chosen weapon.

I only wiped out the enemy planes, and i got only about 6-7 of them.

Best way to kill them? use stun smoker or Flash blinder on them while aligned against a mountain.

At least 80% of those flashed die on the crash >.>